General Motors is taking its efforts to increase fuel economy across the board seriously with its "near luxury" Buick brand. Last year, GM made the 2.4-liter four-cylinder eAssist engine standard on the Buick Lacrosse and made the more powerful (and thirstier) 3.6-liter V6 engine a no-cost option.

That same approach is now being applied to the slightly smaller Buick Regal. The traditional 2.4-liter four-cylinder engine is being replaced with the 2.4-liter four-cylinder eAssist. GM hasn't announced pricing yet for the 2013 Regals, so we're not sure how much will be added to the vehicle's base price to account for the more expensive hybrid components.

Buick Regal eAssist

With that being said, GM's mild hybrid offering is hardly competitive in today's market and it only matches the fuel economy of traditional midsize sedans with regular gasoline engines. For comparison:

The essentially endless attacks on the Volt are little more than a political witch hunt. Its the truth. Now is it unjustified? Not entirely no. Volt has unfortunately been used politically both in "positive" and "negative" ways. So its not entirely fair to just look at the negative political press.

Exactly. These people crying foul now had no problems with partisan left-wing media giving the Volt a rock-star treatment in the press.

The NHTSA essentially created this controversy by sitting on the Volt fire report for five months before Bloomburg, not them, broke the story. It showed a clear conflict of interest and an effort to downplay any potential negativity about a vehicle that the current Administration is personally invested in. The NHTSA is an agency that should be above such partisan maters and impartial, and sadly, we now know they are not.

Exposing things like this is not a witch hunt, it's what journalists are supposed to do. We need the media to be a political watchdog, not it's leash holder.

So we have a controversy, a potential cover up, and a Congressional hearing on the matter. I wouldn't call reporting on this an "attack".

quote: Exactly. These people crying foul now had no problems with partisan left-wing media giving the Volt a rock-star treatment in the press.

Careful there.

I have a significant problem with the left-wing media giving the Volt a "rock-star" treatment.

But I have a question Reclaimer.

GM, one of the top 3 car manufactures for decades and the most successful US automaker is going to debut a radical new product with an attempt to make it accessible to the everyman. They claim they want it to be a flagship/halo product and feature it in their press releases and autoshows. Why wouldn't US media give it the Rockstar treatment?!?!

Did Obama and certain liberal politicians try to exploit the Volt? Yes, but the Volt was planned before Obama even declared his intention to run for President.

quote: The NHTSA essentially created this controversy by sitting on the Volt fire report for five months before Bloomburg, not them, broke the story.

Sigh. No. The NHTSA treated the Volt fires similar to any other emergent safety work and investigation. Apparently the NHTSA is staffed with Engineers and Non-Partisian government employees who didn't understand the Volt needs to be treated -special- and -different-. The Volt fires are not a safety issue, were never a safety issue, and required significant thought and retesting before conclusions could be reached.

I am sorry Reclaimer, if you consider the NHTSA handling of the Volt situation to be a "cover-up", I doubt there are products that you use every day that don't have their same cover-up issues. These products don't have Congressional hearings... otherwise Congress would do little else.